Unfinished Business
Catherine Daly
Published by Catherine Daly
Copyright 2012Catherine Daly
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Praise for Catherine Daly's Writing
Praise for Charlotte's Way
Her characters are believable and her storyline is just gripping enough without being over the top.
Watch out for Daly, she could very well be the next Maeve Binchy. (Bibliofemme)
...a heartwarming family tale about discovery, love, longing and friendship...(In Dublin Magazine)
Excellent, really, really magnificent. Catherine Daly has definitely delivered a great book once again. (Woman's Way)
Praise for 'All Shook Up'(2004)
Daly is a good storyteller (Irish Independent)
Catherine Daly has a gift for capturing ‘real-life’ dialogue…one of the most enjoyable books I have read in ages, I really could not put it down. (Woman’s Way)
…explores with great maturity the crisis facing many young couples trying to juggle kids and a career. (Evening Herald)
An intelligent read for the modern working mum. (Sunday World)
Search for Catherine Daly's page on Smashwords to find her other books
This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
Catherine Daly qualified and worked as a pharmacist. She started writing after the birth of her second child. She has had three novels published by Poolbeg Press: in Ireland:
All Shook Up (2004)
Charlotte's Way (2005)
A French Affair (2006)
She is the founder member of www.writeon-irishgirls.com and has her own website at www.catherinedaly.com.
She served as a comittee member of Irish PEN for five years (chairman 2007 to 2009) and lives in Dublin with her husband and two children and a dog.
Unfinished Business.
The accident that was to change everything happened at half past three on a Friday afternoon in August. Most people were winding down at the end of their week, preparing for the weekend, but all Rosemary could think was that she needed to be home by half past five in case Edward thought of something else he needed for his important weekend conference. Rosemary was fairly confident she’d packed everything he could possibly need to impress his colleagues and competitors at the event, but it would be just like Edward to think of something at the last minute and then sniff and tut, in that distracted way of his, implying it was her fault for not preparing for every eventuality.
She sat on the kerb, behind the now parked car, trying not to cry and reassuring concerned onlookers that she was all right. Which wasn’t true. She felt like she had done twelve rounds with Mike Tyson. Her ribs hurt so much that she winced with each breath; her head pounded, especially if she moved it, and she had to keep wiping blood from her eye with a soggy tissue, blood that was running down from a cut on her forehead. But worse, far worse than any physical injury was the sickening realisation that now Edward would realise where she had been all afternoon. When the young policeman asked Rosemary if he could follow her to the hospital, to take a statement about the accident, she could only nod weakly. She was at least grateful that he wouldn’t upset her husband by turning up at home in a squad car, causing the neighbours’ curtains to twitch.
Casualty was quiet and she was seen quickly. She reassured the doctor that she had not been knocked out, and he examined the cut on her head.
“Two stitches will sort that out for you, Mrs. Regan. It looks a lot worse than it is. There are a lot of blood vessels under the scalp, and they bleed like fury if you cut them at all. The only scar, and I promise it will be a tiny one, will be under your hairline; your face is just grazed.”
Rosemary thanked him.
“Right, so, I’ll just get Staff Nurse O’Reilly to clean you up, and then I’ll come back to put in the stitches. Your ribs aren’t broken you’ll be glad to hear, just badly bruised. Have the painkillers helped?” She nodded, but her doctor didn’t seem convinced, mistaking the worried look on her face for distress. “Are you sure? I can prescribe something stronger.” She tried to smile, but only managed to pull off a grimace.
“I’m fine, honestly,” she said. “Just…Look, I’m fine, really.”
“If you’re sure...” The doctor seemed to hesitate at the curtain screening off the cubicle, but then the lure of a far too-rare coffee break decided him and he pulled back the curtain to leave. “I’ll see you later, so. Don’t forget; if you begin to feel the slightest bit sick, or groggy, push the call button at once.’
“Of course. But I didn’t really hit my head, just scratched it on the car as I fell.” The doctor didn’t answer, just made his escape at the same moment as a severe-looking receptionist pushed her head between the curtains.
“Mrs. Regan, we haven’t been able to contact your husband at the number you gave us. Apparently he always takes Friday afternoons off?” The woman’s severe expression hardened, as if she was implying that Rosemary was wasting valuable health service resources by giving the receptionist misleading information.
Rosemary tried to look as if she’d merely forgotten about Edward’s early finish on a Friday, but it was news to her. In fact she had always believed Friday afternoon to be set aside for the partners’ meetings. And Edward, more often than not, returned home late after them. More often than not smelling of wine and food, if some of the partners decided to complete their work talk over a meal.
“Sorry, to have wasted your time,” she apologised. “But it’s not necessary to contact Edward is it? The doctor seems happy enough with me. I’ll call a taxi and make my own way home.” She felt a faint glimmer of hope.
“I don’t think that would be wise.” The receptionist shook her head, her vast medical knowledge lending weight to her assertion. “Not wise at all. You never know with head injuries. It’s best if I keep trying to reach your husband. Does he have a mobile number I could try?” She bustled off with the information Rosemary reluctantly supplied; a woman with a mission, ready to track Mr. Regan to the ends of the Earth.
“Now Mrs. Regan, let’s get that wound cleaned up so that Doctor…Good God, Rosie! What are you doing here?” The male nurse stopped in his tracks, and a huge grin spread across his face. His warm brown eyes danced with delight at seeing her.
“I’d have thought that was obvious. I’ve been throwing myself under cars in every city in the country in an attempt to find you.” She felt strangely upset that she hadn’t known he had moved back home. “Staff Nurse O’Reilly I presume? Welcome back, Mark.”
“My God Rosie, I haven’t seen you since…” He rushed forward and looked as if he was going to hug her. She flinched automatically bracing herself for pain. He stopped, and a professional expression replaced the split second of hurt she saw on his face.
“Sorry Mark. It’s my ribs, they hurt like hell.” She tried to grin. “You can owe me that hug.”
“You’ve certainly changed Rosie,” Mark said, smiling again.
Changed for good or for bad, she wondered, but didn’t ask. Why should she care what an ex-boyfriend thought? She was a married woman now.
“You look so elegant, so stylish, so…Grown up!”
Bad then, she decided.
“And you still look so…” A distant, wistful look came over him.
Maybe not so bad. She knew he was remembering the long forgotten Rosie, in jeans and T-shirts, with wild, untamed long auburn hair. The Rosie with her heart on her sleeve and her foot in her mouth. So sure of what she wanted from life. A long way from Rosemary, in a Jaeger knitted suit, a bloodstained white blouse and pearls. Pearls! A woman who rarely voiced her opinion without checking first with Edward what her opinion should be.
“Mrs. Regan.” He rolled the name over in his mouth, tasting it. “You got married then?”
“Yes, Edward’s his name, an accountant. He has his own firm. Set up on his own seven years ago, just a year after we got married. He’s doing well. There’s three partners now…” Stop it, she thought, you’ll be giving out his school grades next.
“Still married?” Mark asked. The question took her by surprise and her shocked expression made him laugh.
“Sorry, I’m afraid I’m just an old cynic. Fifty percent of all marriages… blah, blah, blah. This might sting.” He applied some moistened gauze to her temple.
The young policeman came in at that point, and asked her a few more questions about the accident.
“It was my own fault. I was in a hurry, I needed to catch that bus, get home before…I crossed without looking,” she babbled.
“Another witness suggested the driver wasn’t looking where he was going. If you want to take it further…”
“No! Absolutely not!” She cried. “I mean, no real harm done, best to forget about it.” She lowered her voice. “My husband doesn’t need to know where the accident took place does he?”
The policeman went pink and snapped his notebook shut.
“As the incident is closed, it’s up to you what you tell him, Madam.” He scuttled out.
Mark was cleaning grit out of the grazes on her hands now.
“It’s not what you think,” she said, not sure why she felt she had to explain herself to him.
“I don’t think anything.” But as he looked up at her, she could see he was dying for an explanation.
“I was at work. Edward doesn’t know yet that I have a job. I will tell him, of course, there just hasn’t been a right time.” She hadn’t found a right time in the six weeks since starting her part time job. “He can’t understand why I would want to work, it’s not exactly as if we need the money.”
“Has our super-efficient Julie managed to reach him yet?” Mark changed the subject. “If you have no lift home, I’m finishing up soon.” He glanced at the address on her chart. “I live out your way, I can bring you home, make sure you’re alright until…”
He looked into her eyes. “I’d like to… I mean…We could have a drink maybe, a cup of tea even. Catch up on old times…”
“It was a long time ago Mark.”
He had broken her heart when he had left to study nursing. She couldn’t understand why he turned down an offer closer home, and he was angry that she insisted on staying at home, in the town they had both sworn to escape from, the first chance they got. Stubbornly, she broke it off with him, and then was devastated when he didn’t come begging for the forgiveness she longed to give him. She had married Edward less than a year later. On the rebound, but she had married him. And that still meant something, didn’t it?
“Any kids?” Mark tried to lighten the mood.
“No, we’re…well…” She longed for children, but how could she explain that after seven years of refusing to discuss it, Edward had recently announced that he was too old, at forty four, to start a family?
“Oh well, plenty of time. You’re only thirty.” Mark looked sad for a moment. “It was kids that tore apart my one lasting relationship while I was away. I wanted them, she didn’t. Amy’s a doctor. She said she’d never make consultant if she had children. Although a few years later, she made consultant, got married within the year, and had her first child before the tan had faded from her honeymoon. Maybe she just didn't want to have kids with me.”
“Do you miss her?” Rosemary was glad to take the spotlight off herself.
“At first. But it was never going to work…we met too soon after…” He couldn’t meet her eyes. “It was a mistake, that’s all.”
Rosie’s hand was now cleaner than when she stepped out of the shower, but Mark kept stroking it with the damp cotton wool. Even through the thin layer of latex of his surgical gloves her fingers recognised his touch. She hoped he couldn’t feel her pulse racing. Maybe she was suffering from concussion after all.
“Rosemary! My Dear. What happened you?” Edward went pale as he pulled back the curtain. She closed her jacket to hide her bloodstained blouse; he was very squeamish.
“Don’t worry, it’s not nearly as bad as it looks, Mr. Regan.” Mark stood up to leave. “I’m just finished here. Dr. White will put in those stitches and then you can go. If you like you can ask for a referral to plastic surgery to check on that scar, but it's not going to amount to much.” He was gone before she could even thank him, let alone say all things she wanted to say, but were probably best left unsaid.
Edward leaned over and kissed Rosemary on the cheek. She smelled alcohol and garlic. Not unpleasant odours. White wine, fresh garlic, as if he’d just stood up from the table.
“I was meeting a client all afternoon with Jeannine, the new trainee,” he explained without meeting her eyes. “I only just heard what happened. As we’re going to be out of here soon, I’ll ask her to wait and give us a lift home.”
“You didn’t drive to the restaurant yourself?”
“Eh… no. My car’s still at the office. Back in a minute.” He was gone.
Suddenly Rosie needed to go to the bathroom. She poked her head between the curtains. From the corner of her eye she spotted Edward beetling towards the waiting area. A young woman, who seemed to be in her early twenties, with long blond hair and wearing navy formal trousers and an expensive white T-shirt, stood up. She looked angry. He said something to make her smile, and then brushed a strand of hair out of her face. A gesture Rosie recognised. Edward used to brush her hair back like that, before he persuaded her that she would look much better with short hair. The woman laughed at something he said, and sat down again. She smiled and Edward took her hand in his and sat down beside her.
Edward returned to Rosemary just as the doctor cut the thread on the last stitch, and signed her chart with a flourish.
“That’s it, you’re free to go now. You can come back in ten days or so to get those stitches removed, or go to your own doctor,” he said. “This is a prescription for a course of antibiotics and some painkillers. Those ribs are going to get sore.” He scribbled a few lines onto a sheet of paper and thrust it at Rosemary before leaving.
“Rosemary…” Edward hesitated, hopping from foot to foot. It was a habit of his that annoyed his wife. It was as though he was trying to look vulnerable, or indecisive, which he never was. “As you’re going to be fine, would you mind awfully if Jeanine and I went back to the office for a couple of hours? It’s just that…”
“That’s alright, I understand.” She smiled a smile that didn’t get past her lips. “Unfinished business. You go on out to her. I want to leave a thank-you note for the nurse.’ She ignored his look of impatient irritation and went to the desk.
Rosemary wrote down her name and phone number on a page ripped out of her diary, and asked at reception if there was any way of leaving a message for a member of staff. She named him.
“Mark?” The receptionist said. “He should be out in a moment and you can give it to him yourself. He’s just getting changed,”.
Rosie remembered how he had offered her a lift home and the opportunity to ‘catch up on old times.’ She crumpled up the note she had been writing, shoving it back in her pocket.
“Good, I’ll wait for him. Mark and I are old friends.” Her smile spread beyond her lips, lighting up her eyes, for the first time in far too long. “He offered me a lift home actually, and I think I should take him up on it. My husband has some unfinished business to attend to.”
She turned as a door beside her opened and Mark emerged.
“That lift home…” she said as their eyes met. “Is your offer still open?”
He grinned, and to Rosemary’s surprise, she blushed again and her stomach flipped.
“I think I have some unfinished business myself,” she thought as he looped his arm through hers and led her to the car park.